Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether he plans that the new, single trust for people affected by contaminated blood will be a registered charity; whether he plans that that trust will have trustees representing (a) his Department, (b) the Haemophilia Society and (c) the infected community; and whether he plans that the registered beneficiaries of that trust will be contacted from the (i) wider beneficiary community registered with the MFET and Skipton Fund or (ii) narrower list of people registered with the Caxton Foundation, Eileen Trust or MacFarlane Trust.

There will be a new scheme administrator combining the discretionary and annual payment functions of the existing five schemes into a single scheme going forward.

The new scheme administrator will become operational in the financial year 2017/18 and the current bodies will operate until the new scheme is operational.

The Department has initiated the pre-market engagement phase of the procurement process for identifying a new scheme administrator. At this stage, it is too early to comment on who will be successful in the procurement process and what their internal governance arrangements will be.